Success Stories

JM Family Enterprises, Inc., founded by Jim Moran in 1968, is a $13.1 billion diversified automotive company ranked No. 23 on Forbes’ list of “America’s Largest Private Companies.” It is also ranked No. 34 by FORTUNE® as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For®, its 17th consecutive year on the list. JM Family has approximately 4,100 associates and its primary subsidiaries include Southeast Toyota distributors, the world’s largest independent distributor of Toyota and Scion vehicles, World Omni Financial Corp., a diversified financial services company, JM&A Group, one of the leading independent providers of finance and insurance (F&I) products in the automotive industry, JM Lexus, the largest volume Lexus dealership in the world, and JM Service Center LLC, the company’s internal shared services center.

JM Family has a longstanding commitment to growing its business in a way that respects the environment and contributes to society. The company takes a structured approach to becoming a more sustainable organization, with a particular focus on reducing its environmental impacts, using resources more efficiently and optimising its EHS programme. It has worked in partnership with UL EHS Sustainability since 2009 to develop innovative approaches to managing sustainability performance, using UL’s award-winning system to help drive positive change across the organisation.

Challenge

Having embarked on an ambitious sustainability strategy in 2008, JM Family required an advanced data management solution to help measure the success of key initiatives. Initially, the company would track environmental data in facilities including a parts distribution centre, vehicle processing centres, trucking facility and office buildings. Since 2014, the company has honed its strategy further, developing comprehensive plans to improve business processes. Importantly, it aims to engage employees at all levels in its data management and reporting efforts.

Solution

JM Family uses the PURE Platform to manage multiple aspects of its environmental data, from energy and GHG emissions to water and waste. It also uses the system to help drive environmental compliance. More than 60 users currently engage with the system regularly to monitor fundamental data across some 50 buildings. The company consistently scales up monitoring activities as it expands its sustainability initiatives. It has developed an in-depth knowledge of how best to use the system and works closely with UL to address new data management and analysis challenges.

Results

The company is continuously examining its carbon footprint in greater depth (including by using customised conversion factors), exploring specific aspects of its operations in detail in order to optimize efficiency and cut emissions. For example, it uses the system to help calculate the carbon intensity of its logistics operations, which encompass both the transportation of vehicles, parts and accessories.

Elsewhere, JM Family has made use of the PURE Platform to lower the number of waste collections made at the corporate campus by more than two thirds. It monitored the weight of the site’s trash compactor, only organizing a collection when compactor was nearly 90% full. In addition to streamlining waste collections, this has also reduced traffic to the site and therefore emissions. JM Family is looking to roll out this initiative to other sites starting with their Lexus dealership.

Through its collaborative relationship with UL, JM Family has both fine-tuned the system to respond to its requirements and helped to inform the way that UL develops the solution. In one example, JM Family and UL are exploring automated data entry. Through this project, JM Family will move from 40 people hard-keying information each month to capturing utility data such as water, natural gas and electricity seamlessly through its PURE Platform (following on from UL’s partnership with Urjanet, the world’s first provider of automated utility data). This will allow employees to spend more time on analyzing utility consumption data and identifying opportunities for improvement. This joint initiative will extend to capturing solar production data in the near future.

Finally, JM Family’s Vice Presidents are increasingly using the system to gain greater visibility over key areas of the business – by means of high level performance dashboards – and using this information to inform strategy discussions.